Agricultural combine harvesters, or combines, and similar apparatus are used for the harvesting of grain (e.g., wheat, corn, barley) from plants growing upon an agricultural field. Combines combine the grain harvesting operations of reaping, gathering, threshing, and winnowing, or cleaning, which, in earlier years, had been performed by separate apparatus, into a process termed "combining"; hence, the name "combine" harvester.
A combine typically includes a frame, a main body supported thereto, and ground support devices such as wheels and/or crawler treads to support the frame on the surface of the field. A combine, or other crop harvesting apparatus, may be configured as an implement towed and steered by a vehicle such as a tractor and having internal devices powered by a power takeoff shaft associated with the tractor, or it may be configured as a vehicle itself powered by an on-board engine, or other suitable prime mover, in which event at least some of the ground support devices are made controllably steerable so that the apparatus may be guided over the field. The present invention applies to both such configurations of crop harvesting apparatus.
Traditionally, farmers have had to consider their fields as essentially uniform and homogeneous over their entire areas, as there were no practical means to do otherwise. The advent and progression of site-specific farming, also known as precision farming, however, now makes it possible for a farmer to generate and maintain a Geographic Information System (GIS) database of his fields on his office or laptop computer. The database may be viewed, or printed, as a map having a plurality of selectable layers, wherein each layer represents a data file corresponding to data previously acquired; e.g., regarding soil type, topography, field boundaries and infrastructure, previous years' yield and moisture data, nitrogen content of soil and/or of crop, etc. Each data point within each data file is geo-referenced (i.e., correlated and stored with a corresponding locational description of the location within a field where the data was taken), allowing GIS mapping to be performed. Using this information enables the farmer to discern how best to vary his operations over the field in order to maximize crop production and quality while minimizing expenses. For example, some areas of a field may require more fertilizer, while others require less or none. Similarly, areas of a field can require differing amounts of herbicide, biocide, and/or pH buffering agent. Further, areas of a field may need greater or lesser depths of tilling and/or planting. Other spatially variable parameters are also known.
It is known to manually procure a sample of grain after a combine has harvested the grain and emptied its hopper, place the sample in a container, and mark the container with an identification (e.g., field number or description, sample number, date, time, etc.) for later analysis (e.g., of constituents such as protein or gluten). While one could procure and mark a number of such samples, this method does not provide useable knowledge regarding spatial variations within a field since the information regarding the exact locations at which the samples were harvested from the field becomes lost.
It is also known to provide for a combine including a system which obtains discrete samples of grain during or immediately after the combining process, prior to the grain being mixed in a storage bin, or grain tank, with other grain processed earlier and elsewhere within the field. Such a system was described by Eisele et al. of Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kans., in "Field Scale Spatial Variability of Wheat Quality", Paper No. MC97-103 of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers (ASAE), St. Joseph, Mich. This system used sampling sites pre-selected by longitude and latitude coordinates and arranged in a grid pattern. When the combine reached a sampling site, the sampling process was manually triggered by the operator using a button in the combine's cab. This system, however, did not generate and store sampling site locational data on the combine during the harvesting of the grain.
It is also known to provide for an agricultural system including a combine which measures and records geo-referenced grain yield and moisture data using on-board sensors and portable memory devices (e.g., diskettes, PCMCIA cards, zip-disks) or a wireless data link to a remote computer memory device. Such systems are commercially available from, for example, Case Corporation, assignee of the present invention, which produces such products as part of its Advanced Farming Systems, or AFS.TM., product line. Such systems have heretofore not, however, addressed a need in precision farming to take grain samples in a field for off-line analysis and to then correlate the analysis to the field.
It would be advantageous to provide for a combine to include a grain sampling system for the acquiring of samples of grain throughout a field and for identifying the location within the field from which each sample was obtained, so that spatial variations of characteristics of the grain within the field may become known.
It would also be advantageous to provide for such a grain sampling system to identify each sample with a unique identification, such as a bar-coded identification, for facilitating off-line sample analysis and entry of sample data into a GIS.
It would also be advantageous to provide for such a grain sampling system to correct the locational identifications for offsets due to combine throughput time.